


Familienähnlichkeit

by thedevilchicken



Category: Furious 7 (2015), The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood, Blow Jobs, Breathplay, Fight Sex, Lookalikes, M/M, Missions, Rimming, Shower Sex, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:09:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there’s ever been a time when Owen should’ve wondered if he should really be doing what he’s doing, it’s right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familienähnlichkeit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



If there’s ever been a time when Owen should’ve wondered if he should really be doing what he’s doing, it’s right now. 

He knows this. Abstractly, he knows this, because he knows how most people think - he’s not _most people_ , no, nor are the majority of his acquaintances, but over the years he’s had to work out what most people like and what most people do and what most people want because it’s useful in his line of work, arguably essential. If you know what’s expected then it’s so much more easily subverted. If you know what’s expected then you can affix the required smile or salute or other anticipated action and the world at large will never suspect you. Provided, of course, that you’re good enough. 

Owen is good enough. For years, everyone thought he was one of the lads, one of the team, one of the heroes, and now they think they understand his motives. They thought he fit in and now they think he fits into a slot neatly labelled _mercenary_.

But Owen is stretched out on his stomach on a trestle table, behind the scope of a sniper rifle. He’s not most people. He doesn’t fit in. The labels they apply are an ongoing exercise in military imprecision. 

Snipers, properly trained ones, military trained ones, _good_ ones, form only a small percentage of the world’s armed forces and a tiny percentage of the population at large. It’s a group roughly as exclusive as “people who could hack the Pentagon” or “people who unironically enjoy the music of Cliff Richard,” with substantially fewer members than even “people who will die from lightning strikes this year” or “died from fugu poisoning in the past ten years.” Owen’s eaten fugu more than once and thinks it’s highly overrated. 

Most good snipers are employed various militaries or other governmental services, clandestine or otherwise, and so even among “good snipers” Owen doesn’t fit in. He’s not even an assassin by trade, though it’s true that assassins who favour long-distance rifle shots do form a tiny intersection of the Venn diagram between “good sniper” and “paid killer”. But Owen basically only shoots for fun. Or, sometimes, much like now, he uses the scope of his rifle as he’d use a good pair of binoculars; it just comes with a trigger attached. 

The man he’s watching isn’t exactly _most people_ , either. The man he’s watching there in the hotel across the street from the office building where he’s made his perch is a mercenary who would likely be wanted all around the globe if anyone in charge had any idea what he’s done. He’s not quite six feet tall, head shaved bald, and as he takes off his clothes in the afternoon sunlight, Owen’s unsurprised by the definition he sees his arms and his chest and his abdomen. He’s unsurprised because he knows every inch of him. He knows the hard set of his jaw, knows the hard sweep of his collarbones, the hard plane below his navel that disappears with a trail of coarse dark hair beneath the buckle of his belt. He knows the dimples at the base of his back. He knows every one of the scars on his skin. He knows because he’s watched him before. This is not the first time - far from it. 

The man that he’s watching is with, however - he’s never watched him before. He sweeps the scope over to him, his index finger stretched out over the rifle’s chilly metal, out of the way of the trigger so shooting would have to be a choice and not an impulse. That’s a lesson he learned some time ago and right now, at this moment, he’s glad that he did. He’s _very_ glad, because what he sees there is the first genuine surprise he’s known in years. 

The two of them could be twins. 

\---

Owen met Lee Christmas in Kabul in 2003. 

He remembers being faintly pissed off under his perennial professional veneer that his new commanding officer believed his team required assistance of any kind; it was their first deployment to Afghanistan, yes, but it was far from their first op as a team and they’d demonstrated their exemplary competence on several previous assignments. He was still tamping down his irritation to save for later or a rainy day - you never knew when an old grudge would come in handy - when the office door swung open. After that, irritation had to take a momentary back seat. 

In walked the head of the company assigned to assist them, a seasoned SAS sergeant named Jackson about whom Owen had to admit he’d heard nothing but excellent reports. And when Owen turned his head to look at him there in their mutual CO’s stuffy office, he came as close as he ever has in his life to performing a comedy double take because for a second, in spite of the sergeant’s stripes at Jackson’s shoulders, the name at his chest and every shred of knowledge that Owen possessed as regarded the situation, it was just like he was seeing someone else. For a moment, for a _long_ moment, in the dim afternoon light through one small, high window, Owen was almost convinced he was looking at his brother. 

He wasn’t, of course; that was evident from the first time Jackson opened his mouth because while the tone of his voice was also similar, his syntax wasn’t. And besides which, he wasn’t looking at Deckard because Deckard was in all likelihood half the world away though frankly, he could have been right around the corner and Owen likely wouldn’t have known it; the SAS is hardly known for issuing reports on their covert operatives’ locations, and Deckard can be a taciturn bastard at the best of times. But Sergeant Lee Jackson, even when they were finally dismissed and filed out into the rather stark light of day with a blink of their eyes against the admittedly shrouded sun, was still just like his brother’s double.

“My men and I don’t need your help, sergeant,” Owen told Jackson, catching him by one oddly familiar arm. “Just so you’re in possession of all the facts.”

Jackson shrugged out of his grasp. “And me and my men don’t need to get shat on from a great height over your fucking pride, sir,” he replied, quite cheerfully. “Just so _you’ve_ got all the facts.”

Perhaps he should have reported him. Perhaps he should have dressed him down for his tone and his address right then and there - Owen had discovered early in his career that he had a happy knack for putting the fear of God or at least the fear of official reprimand into his subordinates when the situation called for it and maybe it would even have worked on Lee Jackson, though he suspects now that Lee would just have gone through the motions, made the right noises, affected appropriate contrition and consequently got off scot free. But what he did was laugh and Jackson shook his head and raised his brows and smiled a smile that more than likely meant _just my luck, the bloke’s a fucking nutter._ Perhaps he was. Perhaps he is. Lee’s judgement has perhaps been suspect on occasion, over the years, but it can usually be relied upon. 

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious beginning, as Owen chuckled and left stage right and Jackson - still _Jackson_ then and not yet _Christmas_ \- went the other way though Owen suspects that was more for effect than requirement. Of course, Owen isn’t exactly the type to believe in portents or auguries or even luck. His brother once told him that luck is for the unprepared; he still believes that to this day. He believes everything Deckard has ever told him because there’s just no reason not to, all things considered. But that day in back in 2003, in Afghanistan with Lee Jackson, he hadn’t seen his brother in years. 

For the first three days, all that Owen did was watch while they awaited their orders. He watched how the base worked, watched the general and his staff, watched the other officers, watched how the companies fit together and interwove and interacted though frankly it was for the most part just another base beneath a topcoat of new quirks to learn and navigate. He watched his team, how they settled in, how they did their jobs, servicing the fleet of vehicles they might need to use when their op finally saw a green light in place of frustratingly endless amber. He watched Jackson’s team, ten men who jogged five miles every morning and trained with a kind of jovial discipline to which no other team on base came close, even Owen’s own. 

And, of course, because he could hardly help himself, he watched Lee Jackson. He didn’t even try to dress it up as due diligence; he was simply intrigued. 

The way Jackson moved was unfamiliar, at least outside the most general of parameters. The way he spoke was amusing but likewise struck no chords. His expressions were an open book that seemed to have been written in an odd, tangential dialect of a language he knew, perfectly intelligible but somehow unexpected. But Jackson’s body, that was something he was convinced that he knew, and so he watched to find out if he was right. He watched him walking, watched him talking, watched him at breakfast and at lunch and dinner as he ate and drank and smiled and joked and everything screamed that he bore no resemblance at all to Deckard Shaw but it was still there, the purely physical resemblance, his face and his arms and the length of his legs and the circumference of his waist. But Owen had seen Deckard only fleetingly in the past three years and so he knew further research was required. 

Three days rapidly became four, became a week, became two. He watched Jackson fire a gun. He watched him throw knives, like it was some kind of well-rehearsed party trick. He watched him fight, training bouts with his men wearing mitts in their makeshift gym, while Owen worked a punchbag or lifted weights in an attempt to remain at least somewhat inconspicuous. But he still didn’t have enough data after their first fortnight there on base, so he made his way into the showers and he took his time and he waited. Jackson came through in the end, took off his clothes and joined him, just two showerheads away. Naked, the differences were easier to see, easier to catalogue, but the water and the foam of overly pungent shower gel were still something of an obstacle. 

“You’ve been ogling me like I just stepped out of page bloody three,” Jackson said on the fourth day of week three, as they looked at each other under the spray. 

“You remind me of someone,” Owen replied, and that was at least the truth.

“Your boyfriend, by the look of it.”

Owen snorted but he didn’t deny it and it was perhaps that lack of denial that made Jackson frown and look away. Which was, Owen supposed, when he got the idea. 

To be fair, he knows he knew even then that it was far from a _good_ idea; of course, the problem was he also knows he knew he’d had vastly worse ideas over the years. Setting off a thermite reaction in his secondary school science lab hadn’t been one of his better moments, for instance. Writing off his grandparents’ car before he’d even had a licence to lose had likewise been an error in judgement. Sleeping with his brother’s ex-girlfriend and his university maths tutor and the sergeant who taught his class unarmed combat at Sandhurst seemed a set of peculiarly connected lapses. Driving a Land Rover into a way and off a pier into a lake to test his team’s modifications - two separate incidents - had at least been calculated disasters. He’s done ridiculous things on occasion, out of boredom or from curiosity. This was curiosity, though he supposes life on base while they awaited orders was far from thrilling, too.

The following morning, he went out to run with Jackson’s team and did the full five miles in boots and utilities with a pistol at his hip and a semi-automatic weapon strapped to his chest just like the rest of them. Jackson kept glancing at him with a frown, the look on his face just as easy to read as Owen had thought it was the day they met - he was trying to work out exactly what the odd officer from the Mobility Division thought he was up to, and was failing quite miserably. 

He spent the rest of the morning with his own team, doing what their CO had taken to referring to not terribly charitably as _wasting petrol_ but what Owen liked to think of as essential training, even if it likely looked very much like several members of SAS personnel pratting about for their own amusement in highly modified, exorbitantly expensive vehicles while everyone else serviced firearms and cleaned cars and generally had considerably less fun. They had a course set up around the interior of an otherwise disused hangar, a course that also ranged around outside through a field only recently cleared of IEDs. Then lunch, then Owen and his team joined Jackson and his team in the gym. 

They were all SAS, of course, but they had very different specialisms; Owen’s team was formed of engineers and mechanics with a flair for precision driving while Jackson’s were bomb disposal experts and weapons specialists; Owen had a master’s degree in Engineering and what Lee had was a specialism in hand-to-hand combat. The sergeant soundly thrashed three of Owen’s men in quick succession, who were happy enough to laugh it off and move on to slightly lesser opponents. Owen, however, just went for the punchbag and bypassed the sparring completely - he remembers how Lee looked at him when he realised they weren’t going to fight that day. It was almost like he considered going over and asking him what exactly he thought he was doing. 

The second day was a repeat of the first almost down to the minute, down to Jackson’s frowns as they ran and then later, in the gym. The two teams spent the evening together after that, unexpectedly, playing poker in Jackson’s team’s barracks, Owen sitting in for a couple of hands though he’d long since been politely ejected from his own team’s games. He’d had few problems reading people since somewhere close to his fourteenth birthday, after all, when Deckard had come home for Christmas and told him in no uncertain terms that the path he was on would end in jail if he didn’t exercise some self-control and learn how to behave. No one else had ever put it the way his brother did that afternoon, though, on the living room sofa over a box of partially melted Ferrero Rocher while Mary Poppins played on the TV across the room. 

“You’re not thick,” Deckard said, flicking a screwed-up ball of chocolate wrapper at Owen’s head that pinged off his cheekbone and made him scowl. “You’ve got a brain in there. Learn to use it before you abuse it, for fuck’s sake.” He tore open another half-melted chocolate and looked at it in faint disgust, but then glanced back at Owen. “You do that and you can get away with murder.”

Owen took that to heart. He’s even sure Deckard meant it that way.

The third day, all went according to schedule; the fourth day was likewise filled with all the same events running in the same order, and Owen took the same back seat that he had on previous days while Jackson started to watch him, trying to work out the game that was apparently afoot. And then, on the fifth day, in the late afternoon in the base gym, Owen left the weights and made his way to the mats where the sparring was taking place. He pulled on a pair of padded mitts, casually, and Sergeant Jackson looked up from the sidelines to see him approach. 

“So,” Jackson said. 

“So,” Owen replied. “Shall we?”

Jackson stood. “Thought you’d never ask,” he said, and they walked out onto the mats. 

The fight itself was ridiculous. Jackson knew what he was doing but Owen had been watching him fight, studying his technique from across the room, evaluating his weaknesses, and Jackson hadn’t seen him fight at all and so that went some way to evening out the odds. Owen had always tried not to show his hand too early, and Lee Jackson had already shown him almost everything he had, but that wasn’t the issue at hand - Owen adjusted, dodged the first few exploratory punches, turned into a kick to block it and butted Jackson with one shoulder, knocking him back, and instead of stepping off and letting him regroup he followed through, pressed his advantage and lashed out with a hard fist to his jaw. Jackson raised his brows as he rubbed at his chin and Owen smiled blithely; perhaps they’d started in a civilised manner but Owen, for all his airs and graces, is still fundamentally uncivilised. 

They drew a crowd after that, mostly their own people but also a few of the more intrepid gym-goers, trying to look inconspicuous and failing miserably. Jackson quite obviously switched to a higher gear and they circled and Owen smiled and that was it, he’d goaded him enough. Lee hit him, a straight one to the body, and Owen caught him in the gut, Lee bared his teeth in something like a grimace and they kept on, striking out, moving in short flashes, Owen’s pulse picking up and Lee’s eyes flashing something between amused and angry each time Owen blocked or dodged or skipped back out of reach. But Owen knew they weren’t evenly matched - he knows precisely where his strengths lie and so when Lee’s knee found his gut and Lee’s elbow struck the back of his neck, when Lee’s padded fist found his face and split his bottom lip open bloody and stinging, when he went down and sprawled winded on the mat, he wasn’t surprised. He just turned onto his back and held up one hand to him. Lee eyed it like he half expected to get pulled down onto the mat along with him but apparently couldn’t think of a sportsmanlike way in which to refuse so he took Owen’s hand and pulled. Owen went up to his feet, letting himself step just a fraction too close. 

“Not bad, sergeant,” he said, as he pulled up the hem of his t-shirt to dab away blood from his chin. 

“Not bad yourself, captain,” Lee replied, frowning at him like he’d not clue exactly what had just taken place. 

Owen’s mouth was still bloody even after he’d wiped it with his shirt. Lee was still looking at it with that same confounded expression on his face when Owen turned away and headed for the showers and so a couple of minutes later, he was unsurprised when he joined him. He was unsurprised he was being watched. 

“I didn’t think you could fight like that,” Lee said, the statement idiotic though no doubt true.

Owen raised his brows as he ran both hands back over his short-cropped hair to the back of his neck and turned his head to look at Lee. “I drive cars for a living but that doesn’t mean I don’t belong in the SAS,” he said. 

Lee snorted. “Well, yeah,” he said, like that was somehow obvious in spite of what he’d just said himself. “It’s not like I thought you were _totally_ incompetent.”

“Yes, thank you for that uplifting vote of confidence,” Owen replied. “It’s all that’s missing from my career. That and a split lip and now, thanks to you, I have both.”

Lee sucked his teeth and looked away. Then he shook his head like he’d made a decision and looked back at him. 

“You’ll live,” Lee said, and the amused look on his face, the dark tone of his voice, suddenly just for a second it really could have been Deckard there instead of him. 

He’d like very much to tell himself that’s why he moved then. He’d like to think it was on the spur of the moment or perhaps that the thought had triggered his desire for further specific scientific comparison because there was Lee Jackson, naked under the shower, reminding him of his brother just as strongly and sharply and vividly as he ever had. He suspected it would have been difficult to explain what he did next in those terms, _you remind me of my brother_ , when he moved away from his own showerhead and closed in on Lee’s. Lee’s eyes widened a fraction but he didn’t move away; it was probably more to do with surprise or curiosity than anything else. 

Maybe Lee expected him to kiss him. Maybe he expected him to hit him. Maybe he genuinely had no idea what he expected and that seemed likeliest from the way he tried to valiantly to hide the sharp intake of breath when Owen’s hand reached out and skimmed down over his abdomen. And maybe Owen should have left it there, with that one startling touch, but the wide-eyed look on Lee’s face was so absolutely fucking hilarious that he decided he’d push it; he ran his hand lower, brushed his knuckles over the trail of hair that led down lower, then wrapped his fingers around Lee’s cock. 

Lee didn’t tell him no. He didn’t move and he didn’t actually say anything at all so Owen took that as more or less all the permission he needed to tighten his grasp and then stroke him. He leaned closer, one hand going up to the wall against which Lee was leaning, his eyes on him as he felt him stiffen quickly in his hand. Then he went down on his knees on the tile and looked up at him with a vaguely amused smirk. 

He’d never known anyone to refuse a blowjob so he wasn’t surprised that Lee didn’t. He said nothing as Owen took him in his mouth, his split lip stinging but he’d had a hell of a lot worse in his time, even if he could taste blood in his mouth again. Lee laughed breathlessly as Owen’s fingers tightened around his balls and then nudged back, rubbed against his perineum as his tongue rasped down the length of the underside of his cock. And then one of Lee’s hands ran over Owen’s wet hair, went to the back of his neck what Owen was sure must have been in spite of himself. Where Owen’s poker face kept his cards close to his chest, Lee’s laid his cards out on the table; Lee wanted so badly to be straight as an arrow, which was likely why Owen was taking such pleasure in goading him. 

After that, Lee didn’t last long. One of Owen’s hands went up to push hard at one hip to keep him still before he pulled back and sat back on his heels; Lee came with a jerk all over Owen’s chest and neck, wide-eyed and thoroughly appalled. He muffled a shout quite ineffectively with back of his hand and Owen watched him from his knees, amused, as Lee’s come was sluiced away from his skin by the shower. 

Owen stood then, as Lee leaned back heavily and tried to catch his breath. For a second he had no clue what he planned to do next as he watched Lee try not to watch him, but then he pushed up against him there under the spray, took Lee’s face in his hands as he pressed bare skin to skin and _made_ him look at him. He’d tasted like Deckard, though that was probably down to the finer points of Armed Forces cuisine. He looked like Deckard, down to the slight upward curve of his cock when hard, down to shade of his eyes and the the fact his nose had probably been broken more than once. The sweep of his collarbones was like Deckard’s, the hollow at the base of his throat and the bump of his Adam’s apple were like Deckard’s. His _mouth_ was like Deckard’s and he kissed him then, hard, harder than he’d meant to but not as hard as he _wanted_ to; when he pulled back and walked back to his own showerhead, Lee had blood from Owen’s split lip smeared against his skin, lurid but already washing away. 

Lee stared at him. Owen looked away, because it turned out the way Lee kissed was nothing like Deckard did and at that moment he wasn’t sure if he was angry about that, if he was disappointed, if he was pleased. Lee stared at him and he couldn’t pinpoint the emotion. And Lee was still staring at him when Owen finally started to wash.

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” Lee said. “Anyone could’ve walked in.”

“Most people call me Owen rather than lunatic,” he replied, and glanced at him sharply. “Or _sir_.”

Lee shook his head. “You’re a fucking lunatic, _sir_ ,” he muttered. And Owen felt that was probably the fairest assessment he’d received in a very long time, so he just mock-saluted in lieu of any other response. Lee laughed, ragged around the edges, and that was that. 

The next day, Lee’s team came to the hangar just as Owen’s was setting up to train. For a moment, as they loitered by the big sliding doors, Owen felt a hot flash of anger - they had no place there, no business being there. But as his team fuelled their vehicles and Lee’s team watched, it occurred to him that maybe they’d all been going at the assignment from the wrong perspective. Perhaps they’d been wasting an opportunity and Owen, for all his pride in his work and his pride in his foresight, has always been the first to admit when there’s room for improvement. He’d rather his pride take a hit at the planning stage than the rest of him take a hit out there. 

“I want you to split your team down into three groups,” Owen told Lee, who raised his brows. “I have an idea.” So Lee did, and Owen sent them out to his team’s vehicles. The two shitty Army vehicles Lee’s team had the use of just wouldn’t do; if they were going to be any use to the op at all, they needed to be with them and Army vehicles be damned. He’d use the lot of them like Marines on a tall ship and have them man the rifles. But teams seemed oddly enthused by the idea and Owen had to wonder if he’d taken his eye off the ball for a moment, for longer than a moment, because of his brother and because of Lee. 

They worked well together. For two and a half, nearly three hours, they all worked well together - Lee’s team piled into the back seats and flatbeds and spent some time getting a feel for the roll of the vehicles, Lee stationed with Owen’s second in command because honestly, Second Lieutenant Walker was perhaps the least experienced man in either team and Owen hoped against hope that the no-nonsense sergeant might help speed his further induction. They all worked well together, quite clear that Captain Shaw was the man in charge of _all_ of them and not Sergeant Jackson. And then, once they’d finished for the day, the gym beckoned once again. 

It was that way for six days, till their op was finally on. The two teams became strangely closer to one merged unit, the men all eating and working and drinking together, playing cards together, and in the afternoon they trained together. Owen sparred with Lee for three more days in a row, found it perversely amusing because he could see exactly what was going through Lee’s mind as they donned mitts and stepped out onto the mats; the afternoon of their first joint training effort, he was thinking about the débacle in the showers the previous afternoon. And perhaps Lee contemplated bypassing the showers that second day but in the end he didn’t. Owen went down on his knees again and sucked him till he came, spat into the drain and then went to wash his hair. The same the following day: Owen put his mouth on Lee, teased him with his tongue till he came with a half-muffled shout and his hands gripping hard at Owen’s shoulders. The next day, too, Owen’s fingers straying back, teasing oh-so-lightly at the hole between Lee’s cheeks. The scandalised look on Lee’s face was hilarious as it switched to grimacing pleasure in an instant, so Owen turned him around and he parted his cheeks and rubbed at his hole with the pad of his thumb. 

Lee was probably ashamed of himself for letting him do it. Lee was probably ashamed of himself for shuffling his feet wider apart, for the sharp intake of breath as Owen leaned in and ran the tip of his tongue between Lee’s cheeks. He was probably ashamed for the way he moaned under his breath, how he jerked himself off as he leaned against the wall. When he came, he was probably ashamed he’d enjoyed it. 

Owen wasn’t ashamed. Even now, he’s not sure he’s ever felt shame, not really. All he knows is Lee’s body seemed just like an exact copy of Deckard’s and somehow, even if it broke Lee in the process, he wanted to do everything to him that his brother had prohibited. 

\---

Their first op ran relatively smoothly, a simple convoy guard that required very little actual action on their part due to highly accurate intel, though when Owen and Lee compared notes it was clear they agreed on certain areas for improvement. 

They met in Owen’s office, one of three drab, windowless rooms at the rear of the Mobility Division’s training hangar, sat down at a coffee table formed of breeze blocks and half a wooden door to which someone had clearly taken a hacksaw and outlined their training plans for their respective teams. Then Lee went to leave and Owen stopped him at the office door. 

He kissed him there and Lee let him. He bit Lee’s neck and he let him do that, too. He rubbed at the crotch of Lee’s utilities with the heel of one hand, slipped his fingers under the fabric beneath the buckle of his belt and brushed the base of Lee’s cock with his fingertips till he was hard and frankly, that took only a matter of seconds. He brought him off just like that, pushed up against the door with his hand down the front of his trousers, his mouth pressed up under Lee’s jaw, then finally allowed him to leave. 

The second op ran just as smoothly, perhaps more so due to their more targeted training. The third was better still and by the fourth, three months after their arrival in the country, their notes for improvement were of such a minor nature that it felt somewhat akin to splitting hairs. And every time they returned, they sat down in Owen’s office. Every time their reports were complete, Owen caught Lee by the door, until he didn’t have to catch him. Lee would stand and Owen would stand and then Owen would make a choice about what they’d do this time. By five months, by op twelve, he had Lee down on his knees, his trousers down around his thighs as he jerked him off from behind. By six months and op seventeen, he was rubbing lubricant between Lee’s cheeks and Lee let him push his fingers knuckle-deep inside him while he sucked him off. Seven months and op twenty-two, he was sucking lines of deep purple love bites into Lee’s thighs while Lee pushed down against his fingers like he’d lost every last shred of inhibition. Deckard had never been like that. Lee wasn’t sure if that mattered. 

At eight months and twenty-seven ops, it was Christmas and somehow their respective teams were both granted leave. Deckard hadn’t been home for Christmas since Owen’s nineteenth birthday so there was precious little point to him leaving - it’s not like he had anyone left except his brother, even then, after their grandparents’ deaths. And Christmas Eve, Owen ensconced in his office with a large pile of paperwork yet to complete, in walked Lee Jackson with a bottle of cheap sherry and three mince pies on a mess hall tray.

“Thought you might fancy some Christmas cheer,” Lee said, handing him the bottle. Owen didn’t even bother to find one glass, let alone two; he opened it, took a swig and handed it to Lee with a nod. He’d been thinking about his brother all day. He guessed Lee would do. 

Lee told him about family Christmases before his parents had died, babbling on like he’d been at the sherry for a while, and Owen drank and listened. Lee’s dad had been SAS too, died overseas though they’d never had more than the official note of _in the line of duty_ to say what happened. Owen could sympathise to an extent - his own father had gone the same way - but lee wasn’t looking for sympathy. He stook and he frowned and he crossed to Owen’s most decrepit old office sofa that looked like it was older than both of them and he paused as Owen looked up at him, the muscle working in his jaw as apparently he weighed his options. Then he planted one knee either side of Owen’s thighs and settled himself down astride his lap there on the couch. 

“You pretend I’m him, right?” Lee said. “When you’re getting me off, I mean. You pretend I’m him.”

Owen didn’t have to ask who he meant because Lee didn’t know. All he had was a vague notion of a far-away boyfriend who didn’t actually exist, and so Owen said, “Yes.” It was at least partially true, not that the truth had ever meant much to either of the Shaws. 

“So pretend I’m him, yeah?” Lee said, turning red in an indelicate way. “Do me and pretend I’m him.” 

Owen raised his brows. “You hardly seem the type for that kind of thing,” he said, trying not to look overly amused. 

Lee glared. “Yeah, don’t be an arse about it, _sir_ ,” he said. “You’d best get on with it before I change my mind.” And so Owen did as he was told. 

He didn’t tell Lee that with Deckard it had never progressed past fumbling, fighting, hard kisses in the dark till they’d been found out one night, some bloody battleaxe of an old great-aunt who’d come to visit them that Christmas when Owen was nineteen and home from uni. All it had taken was one wrong turn on the way to the bathroom and she’d walked straight in to find Owen’s cock in Deckard’s mouth in Owen’s bed. That was they day they’d word off it. Back then there was too much at stake for anyone but Aunt Rita with her nascent Alzheimer’s to ever find out about the two of them for sure.

Owen didn’t say a word throughout and neither did Lee but there wasn’t exactly a need to. They fucked on the floor on their hands and knees, half-dressed, Owen pushed right up inside Lee in a mess of lubricant and sweat and days-old bruises. It was probably Lee’s first time with a man and Owen wishes he could say he regrets that. Honestly, Lee’s never seemed to. 

They spent Christmas Day together, changing oil and checking tyre pressures and getting fucking filthy with dust and grease and brown sauce from the bacon sandwiches they’d decided on in place of mess-cooked turkey and burned Christmas pudding. They spent Boxing Day together, eating After Eights that Lee had “borrowed” from one his team’s unlocked lockers while they didn’t watch the Sound of fucking Music on the crap TV in the corner of Owen’s office, feet up on the makeshift coffee table. lee gave him an oddly mint-scented blowjob as the TV was singing about lonely goatherds and he came trying not to picture Christopher fucking Plummer dancing a ländler. It turned out Lee had a knack for it, even if Owen wasn’t sure he’d ever done it before. It turned out the music didn’t hurt. It turned out it was nothing like getting head from Deckard and they sat together after, polishing off the box of mints and the bottle of sherry till Owen felt half-drunk and faintly sick. That part was Christmas as usual, at least. 

Then their teams returned from leave and their next op was greenlit and the whole arrangement went to hell in a handbasket shaped rather a lot like an armoured car. 

\---

That day, op twenty-nine, eight men from Lee’s team and seven men from Owen’s team all went out to do their job. Three of them made it out alive, with seven of thirty civilians. 

It was a simple convoy op just like so many of the others, driving through the hills to get where they were going. They didn’t see what hit them but Owen was fairly sure that when the lead car went up in flames it was a man in the hills with an RPG, several of them, like a fucking full-out assault. Owen and Lee hauled the few that were left up into the hills to the west in the aftermath, got away as far as they could, ears ringing, one of Lee’s thighs bleeding from a shrapnel wound and Owen’s nose and three fingers broken from his collision with his steering column. A van exploded, machine guns opened fire and Owen knew they didn’t stand a chance unless support came quickly. He glanced at Lee and knew he was thinking the same thing he was. All they could do was keep low, keep quiet and wait, Owen’s hand pushed hard against lee’s thigh to slow the bleeding as his own nose streamed blood over the front of his body armour. By the time reinforcements came in, Owen had no idea if the blood he was covered in was his own or Lee’s or someone else’s but if nothing else, the two of them were still amongst the living. 

It wasn’t that he cared if Lee Jackson lived or died, not really. It wasn’t even that Owen wasn’t completely sure how he might react to the notion of a man who looked so very much like his brother laid out dead on a mortuary slab. There were no unexpected feelings to be confronted, no great and secret love he’d been denying because Owen still isn’t convinced that he’s capable of it except perhaps when it comes to Deckard. When he limped to his office to write his report the next morning, after a freezing night in the hills with Lee’s blood all over his hands and all over his weapons and all over his skin where it had soaked through his clothes, when he sat down at his desk and thought it all through, it was a simple matter: he preferred that Lee Jackson didn’t die, even if he couldn’t say he’d rush to bear his coffin if he did. 

Three days later, paperwork completed, Lee was out of the infirmary and standing in Owen’s office looking the worse for wear. He hadn’t shaved, though that wasn’t exactly the crux of the problem. 

“I’m going home,” Lee said. 

“So I heard,” Owen replied, looking up from his desk. 

“I could’ve stayed, y’know. I’m not so fucked up I can’t change oil till my leg’s right.”

“Yes, I know.” 

“So why didn’t you put in for the damn transfer?”

Owen closed his laptop with a snap and turned to Lee in his swivelling desk chair. “Because I’m not your CO, Lee,” he said, “and I don’t particularly want to be.”

“So I just go.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You bastard.” Lee frowned. “You fucking _bastard_.”

“I’ve been called worse,” Owen said. 

The fight that ensued was ridiculous, more a playground scuffle than a pub brawl but given Owen’s splinted fingers and Lee’s sutured thigh, perhaps that was for the best. Lee’s fingers pushed at Owen’s broken nose and made his eyes tear up, Owen introduced his knee to Lee’s injured thigh, then they were cursing, leaning against each other, shoving at each other, clawing at each other. Lee kissed him, his nose catching Owen’s, making him hiss against his mouth, and when they eased back apart, there was already blood seeping through the fabric of Lee’s trousers from his newly pulled stitches. They weren’t fit enough to fuck, though Owen thought perhaps he wanted to. He thought perhaps he wanted to drag him back to his quarters instead of staying there in his office, thought they could shower and afterwards he’d restitch Lee’s wounded thigh himself. He’d take him to bed and have careful, deliberate sex, no more pulled stitches, no more pressure on broken fingers, broken noses. Lee would have enjoyed it, even if he might have hated himself when they were done. 

“You know, he’s not actually my boyfriend,” Owen said instead.

“Who?” Lee asked, though they both knew he knew what he meant. 

“The person you remind me of, you obtuse bastard.” 

Lee smiled bitterly. “Yeah?” he said. “What gave you the impression that I give a fuck?” And when he left the room after that, abruptly, limping, bleeding, he slammed the door behind him like a total fucking infant. 

He thought he’d regret having admitted it the moment Lee was gone, but he didn’t. He wasn’t even sure why he’d said it in the first place, but there was blood on hands from the cut at Lee’s thigh and he looked at it as he stood there, streaks across his palms and fingertips. When he shoved his trousers down over his hips and took himself in hand, on his knees by the couch, slumped forward, pained and hard and angry, he wasn’t sure if he was thinking of Deckard or if it was Lee. 

\---

Over the years, since the day of their last official joint op, Owen’s seen Lee now and then. Their paths have never actually ceased to cross, part coincidence and part design. 

They were both briefly on base in Bosra in 2006 while Lee’s team regrouped for an op somewhere else in the Middle East after Owen had been promoted to major. They saw each other across the air strip as Lee was hopping down out of a chopper and Owen was checking a gun mount on the side of his armoured car and Lee nodded and Owen nodded and that was the full extent of their interaction, until Owen sought him out later that afternoon. He pushed him up against the barracks wall and Lee could have stopped him, of course. Lee could have pushed him away, could have put him down on the ground in a matter of seconds and not thought twice about it, but he didn’t and so Owen leaned against him and Lee’s hands took fistfuls of the back of Owen’s shirt and they kissed, hard and fast and damn near painful. 

In 2007 they ran into each other while reporting to regimental HQ back in Herefordshire. They were both there in the outer office, sitting side by side to await the the time of their appointments, Lee first and Owen after; when Owen left, Lee was waiting, leaning against the wall outside with his hands shoved down into the pockets of his service uniform. They went off base together, found a mid-priced room in a mid-priced hotel in a mid-priced area and they undressed each other, Lee quiet for once out of some kind of spite because the bastard always has had quite a mouth. He’d talked to Deckard more that year than he talked to Lee, and his brother hadn’t even been in the same country. Lee still looked like him. He didn’t tell him he’d had his blood tested, had them _all_ tested, because the paranoiac in him had always had to wonder. He didn’t tell them he’d wondered if he and Deckard were brothers at all when he’d met Lee Jackson because Lee and Deckard looked more like brothers than Deckard and Owen ever have. He didn’t tell him what he’d found out. 

After that, Owen was out of the service. It was that last op in Afghanistan just after Christmas that had made up Owen’s mind to leave. At least, it was that last op that had kicked his preexisting plans into motion. One instance of Deckard’s sage advice had been to plan for the future because you’d never know what might come come up and slap you down and so he had; he made his connections, he sought out his team and in late 2007 he hit his CO in an apparent fit of uncharacteristic pique and had himself discharged over the whole affair. It was a matter of expediency; the discharge was simpler and swifter than retirement, and should all go to plan he wouldn’t exactly require his Army pension. He had a paying job lined up and the time frame mattered, but more than that, his team had almost died as a result of poor intel; that was the problem with the Armed Forces, always relying on someone else’s work. He thought of Lee bleeding in the dust, the disgust on his face that he’d thought he might die there. He thought of Lee’s blood on his hands and then told himself he’d never have that issue again. He’d gather his own intelligence. 

When they next met, Owen was out of the service and Lee was still in, a kind of unhappy meeting of coincidence somewhere by the Pakistani border. After that, it was a job in the Emirates in 2009, and they were both out, and Lee Jackson was calling himself Lee Christmas. He’s never asked why, but he suspects Lee’s brash American partner had a hand in it. She still doesn’t know why he left the SAS, because he’d never asked that either. 

And since then, Owen’s watched. He’s watched from behind the scope of a rifle, watched him work near and far, watched him throw knives the way Owen recalls he did on the first day they met. His team is excellent if somewhat unorthodox and Owen suspects they’re like family, though the dynamics of family life have never been his strong suit. He’d been an orphan by the age of six, the one set of grandparents he knew gone by eighteen. And his brother is a stone-faced killer who’ll suck him off in the front seat of an overpriced car in a suit he had made to measure, who’s like the James fucking Bond of villainy, who’ll wrap his bloodied hands around Owen’s neck twenty minutes after a kill, he’ll squeeze tight and then tighter and there’s always a second, just a flash of a fraction of an instant, where Owen’s not sure he’ll stop. It gets him off. Just thinking about it gets him hard. Thinking about Lee Christmas just confuses the matter. 

He’s watched. He’s watched Lee work and he’s watched Lee with women and he’s watched him tinker with his favourite motorcycle and sharpen knives and kill. He’s watched him from the far side of of the scope of a sniper rifle and he’s trailed his finger over the trigger because all of that confusion could evaporate in a second, in a puff of pink mist and the echo of a rifle shot. He’s watched him like he’s watching him now, trying to decide if today is the day that he’ll take the shot. Today is _not_ that day. Today, Lee’s in a room with Deckard. Today, Deckard is unbuttoning his shirt as Lee watches. Today, Lee pushes Deckard up against a wall; they kiss and Owen watches them do it. He watches Deckard’s fingers rake down Lee’s back, watches then push and pull till they’re unbuckling one another’s belts, pushing down trousers, stepping out of underwear. He watches as they step together, naked, as their hands move over each other’s arms and chests and hips and thighs, as Deckard squeezes Lee’s arse and he can see Lee laugh out loud. 

He watches them move. The go to the bed and Deckard pushes, sends Lee sprawling, and Owen wonders as he’s always wondered which one of the two would win if they fought. He thinks his brother would, because of what it was he was trained to do, but that’s less of a concern than the moment Deckard joins Lee on the bed. They’re like fucking twins, bald heads and broad shoulders, Deckard on top and then Lee pushes him down and Lee’s on top, looking down at Deckard like he’s not sure if he should stop. It had taken Owen a while - a short while, but still a while - to understand that Lee Christmas was never exactly homophobic, just concerned for his own private sexuality, whether that was family pressure or the Army or who the fuck knew what. Owen suspects he still wants a wife and children and a house and a people carrier, maybe a rugby team to get muddy with at the weekend while not asking himself why he enjoys the communal showers. But there he is with a man who’s practically his double. 

They push and they pull and Deckard smiles the way he does when he has a plan and he doesn’t care who knows it. His poker face is just as good as Owen’s - he taught him, after all - but at this moment Owen knows there’s something wrong, something different. They push and they pull and Lee goes over on his hands and knees and Deckard moves in behind him; he pulls Lee up off his hands and as his hands go around to Lee’s thighs, Deckard’s cock rubs up against the crack of Lee’s arse. Deckard’s going to fuck him and Lee’s going to let him, Owen things. Deckard’s going to do to Lee Christmas precisely what Owen’s wanted since before he knew the terms for it. He doesn’t know if he should be angry or bitter or fucking incensed but whatever the solution, he’s hard against his jeans, against the flimsy trestle table, as Lee turns his head and Deckard’s hand presses over his throat, as they kiss and Owen takes his hand away from the gun. There are differences between them, he knows who is who, but if he’s not careful he might shoot them, one of them, the other, both. 

And then Deckard pulls back and leans back, leans over the side of the bed and finds the jacket of his suit. Before Owen can adjust his view, it’s already happened; Owen’s phone rings. Deckard puts his own phone to his ear, as he rubs the head of his cock between Lee’s cheeks. 

There’s never really any doubt that Owen’s going to pick up, of course. It takes a moment because he’s still from his position in his perch and his telephone is in his hip pocket, he’s been lying on it for an hour. 

“Do I have to tell you what I want?” Deckard says. Owen can see him talking through his scope and Deckard turns, looks out through the hotel room window, looks straight at him as his free hand goes round to stroke Lee’s cock. And Lee turns and looks and mock-salutes as his hand closes over Deckard’s.

“No,” Owen replies. “You don’t.”

Deckard smiles that smile, _that_ smile, the smile that’s five shades darker than Lee’s could ever be, that’s bloody murder if Owen’s reading it correctly. 

“Ten minutes,” Deckard says. “The door’s open.” He pauses, runs his hand from Lee’s cock to the base of his spine as they sit there, Deckard’s chest pressed flush to Lee’s back. He runs his hand up to Lee’s throat, presses back his head, and Lee lets him. Owen can see the love bites at Lee’s spread thighs. He can see the bruises there on both of them and he wonders again which one would win. 

“Don’t be late, Owen,” Deckard says, and once he’s tossed his phone aside, he squeezes at Lee’s neck. Lee doesn’t know what kind of danger he’s in. He has no idea. He has no way to know. 

He doesn’t know if Deckard will have killed him by the time he gets there because he doesn’t know if he means it at all; perhaps he does and perhaps he doesn’t and perhaps that’s half the thrill of it as Owen packs away his rifle in its case and runs, _runs_ , for the stairs. He doesn’t know if he’ll find Lee dead in the bed and Deckard nowhere to be found if he’s not there inside ten minutes, and _that_ is perhaps half the thrill of it. As he runs, his mind’s like a pinhole camera of fantasies, of Deckard’s hands on Lee’s throat while he fucks him, of stepping through the door and seeing them there together. He thinks he’d strip off his own clothes behind the door and he’d go to the bed and it’s been years since he last saw Lee, saw him face to face. He thinks he’d kiss him, hard, push him down and straddle his thighs and he’d rub the length of Lee’s cock against the crack of his own arse, rub the tip of it against his hole and maybe that would be enough to make his brother jealous. Maybe Deckard would let Lee use the lubricant, squeeze it out onto his fingers for him and watch as Lee pushed them into Owen, watch as Owen pushed down against them. Maybe he’d watch them kiss as Lee did it, watch Owen’s hips shift, but he thinks Deckard would be the one who’d push inside him. He thinks Lee would like to watch, red-faced with his cock in his hand. He thinks Deckard would like Lee to watch, because these days there’s nothing to stop them, no old aunts with disapproving frowns, no COs, no girlfriends, no bosses. It’s just them and there’s no longer a need for denial. Maybe this will prove it. 

He walks into the hotel and he goes to the lift, presses the button for the floor where he knows he’ll find the two of them. He’ll walk in, he thinks, and he’ll find them together. He’ll stand them up side by side and they’ll indulge him, he thinks, when he catalogues their differences; perhaps Lee’s an inch taller or Deckard’s an inch broader, perhaps the veins in their wrists have a different pattern completely but they’d still be close enough to wear each other’s clothes, to wear each other’s identities. Perhaps Deckard’s cock is a fraction longer. Perhaps Lee’s mouth on him is hotter. Or maybe the only difference at all is their scars and Owen will press his fingers or his mouth to Lee’s thigh and be grateful he has them both. 

“So, what took you so long?” Lee says when he opens the door, cocky for a man with a cock pressed up against his arse. 

“Traffic was murder,” Owen says. 

Lee snorts and Deckard chuckles. Owen puts down his rifle. Owen takes off his clothes, slowly, piece by piece, and he watches them both watching him. They’re so alike and perhaps they’ve worked out what he did, perhaps they’ve had the tests done for themselves and so perhaps they know; they’re not brothers, not related the way that Deckard is to Owen, but there’s something there. There’s a trace. It’s there. 

“For fuck’s sake come to bed,” Deckard says, and Owen nods once he’d naked and he crosses the room. They’re waiting for him as he draws the curtains. They’re watching him just as much as he’s watched them.

He draws the curtains on the world and he turns to them; Deckard smiles his dark smile as Owen turns on a lamp and Lee rolls his eyes and shakes his head and the wait. 

He draws the curtains because you never know who else is watching. And he’ll keep his family to himself, he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Familienähnlichkeit - a philosophical idea popularised by Ludwig Wittgenstein. To quote Wikipedia, it argues: "things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all".


End file.
